Hi All,
        Yes, I think that the yearly ycles may also be longer than one
year.  Here in Humboldt Bay (Buhne's Pt., King Salmon Village) I have found
in the last couple of months, hundreds of Euspira lewisii (Gould, 1847) on
a mud flat where I have not seen these numbers before.  In Southern
California it is legal to take the lewis moonsnail but here in Humboldt Bay
it is illegal, and has been for years.  There are so many Moon Snails now
that the clammers are finding it difficult to come up with their bag limit
of Gapers and Cockles.
        One can walk the mud flats for a half hour and pick up empty
bivalves by the 5 gallon bucketfull, but all the bivalves have been drilled
by the moon snails.
        Also, there has never been reported before this Spring, any
populations of Calliostoma canaliculata, but now there are hundreds.
Robert Talmadge, who lived  his entire life, here in Eureka until 1979,
kept records of the species that he found in the area and there are no
records of this Calliostoma. It was a shock to my wife, who has great eyes
for small species, to be the first to find it here this April.
        Who knows the whims of NATURE!!!  There are always surprises.
Dan



>Folks,
>
>I went to Shackelford Island near Cape Lookout, NC, yesterday. I never saw
>so many live Shark's Eyes, Neverita duplicatus, as on the sand-and-grass
>flats there.
>
>I tested their reponses several times with different ones. I poked my finger
>into the sand nearby. They all responded by changing direction toward my
>finger sharply and speeding up toward it while burrowing slightly.
>
>Am I correct that they're finding bivalve prey by vibratory or tactile
>sense? Certainly if their vision was keen, they'd veer away from human
>fingers.
>
>David Kirsh
>Durham, NC

Dan & Hiromi Yoshimoto
1164 Vista Dr.
Eureka, California
95503-6018
U.S.A.
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

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